NATED profile: PhD student Leila Ferguson

Leila is currently half-way in the PhD process and is starting to see a faint light at the end of the tunnel. Here she tells us about her project Epistemic Beliefs and Multiple Documents Literacy, and how it is proceeding:

Knowing across sources

Students’ beliefs about the nature of knowledge and how they go about justifying knowledge claims (their epistemic beliefs) are increasingly important as the Internet and digital resources contribute to increased access to information of varying degrees of accuracy. People of all ages have to make judgements about what and whom to believe.

I am interested in finding out more about these beliefs and how they relate to students’ cognition, reading, decision-making and learning from scientific texts. Multiple documents literacy is particularly important because comprehending and corroborating information across several sources is a challenging, but necessary task for students of all ages. The nature of the relation between multiple documents literacy and epistemic beliefs is still being investigated, and this is one of the areas that I hope to shed light on in my studies.

Two projects - different methods

The articles in my dissertation are based on two projects that both focused on epistemic beliefs and multiple documents literacy in the context of young people reading conflicting information about unsolved scientific issues.

The first two articles used mixed methodologies, including qualitative analysis of think aloud protocols, to study the ways in which undergraduates considered conflicting knowledge claims about mobile phones and health risks, as well as how their epistemic cognition seemed to show signs of change over the course of reading. Epistemic cognition was also related to the students’ argumentation and sourcing skills.

Article 3 and 4 are based on a second project, where 10th graders were randomly assigned to reading consistent or conflicting information about sun exposure and health. The main goals were to investigate changes in the pupils’ beliefs about knowledge and knowing relating to the topic, and to study this in relation to other variables, such as working memory, motivation and prior knowledge. The latter studies have a mainly quantitative approach.

Being a research group member

I work as a research fellow at the Department of Educational Research, and I am a member of the research group on Text Comprehension - Development, Instruction and Multiple Texts (TextDIM), as well as a smaller sub-group that focuses specifically on Multiple Documents Literacy.

Being part of a research group has been a valuable experience for me. This has meant that I have been able to use data from a pre-existing study to start working on my first articles while preparing test materials with other group members and then gathering data for my own project. I have learned a lot by working with more experienced people and our group has hosted a number of international scholars over the last few years.

I have also been encouraged to attend conferences and arrange research trips abroad by my supervisor and other senior staff, which has provided many valuable learning experiences. The trip that has made the biggest impression on me, so far, was AERA, where I met a number of prolific researchers and got to be part of an invited symposium. Currently I am planning a stay at the University of Valencia later this year and an extended research trip to New Zealand next year. The latter stay will partly be financed by NATEDs research visit grant.